Ultima creator Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, has weighed in on what's wrong with the games industry, and his diagnosis is not a simple one. Speaking on a panel hosted by the Georgia Game Developers Association, he called himself the "great-grandpa" of the group and said the problems are tangled together, not the result of a single mistake.
Garriott described a recurring pattern: a technological leap arrives, developers rush out simple games that show it off, and deeper design only gets attention in the gaps between those leaps. The current cycle, he argued, is different, because machines are now fast enough that flashy presentation is no longer what matters.
He also took aim at publishers that cancel projects and lay off staff. Garriott said his old label, Origin, never cancelled a project before EA took over, and added that under EA the company "canceled more projects than we completed by a long shot."
Garriott's point that the industry is now at a "creative cliff" is hard to argue with, especially when cancellations keep piling up.
